Consisting of 81 books, mostly novels and short story collections (and the work of Samuel Beckett—“entire”), and mostly twentieth-century modernist fiction, the list came to Powell with Barthelme’s instruction to attack the books, “in no particular order, just read them.”
- Flann O’Brien, At Swim Two-Birds
- Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman
- Isaac Babel, Collected Short Stories
- Borges, Labyrinths
- Borges, Other Inquisitions
- Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Thomas Bernhard, Correction
- Rudy Wurlitzer, Nog
- Isaac B Singer, Gimpel the Fool
- Bernard Malamud, The Assistant
- Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
- Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
- Samuel Beckett entire
- Knut Hamsun, Hunger
- Max Frisch, I’m Not Stiller
- Max Frisch, Man in the Holocene
- Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales
- Tommaso Landolfi, Gogol’s Wife
- Thomas Pynchon, V
- John Hawkes, The Lime Twig
- John Hawkes, Blood Oranges
- Paley, Little Disturbances
- Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
- Susan Sontag, I, Etc.
- Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle
- Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces
- Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
- John Updike, The Coup
- John Updike, Rabbit, Run
- The Paris Review interviews
- Rust Hills (ed.), How We Live
- Joe David Bellamy (ed.), Superfiction
- Puschart Prize Anthologies
- Sternburg (ed.), The Writer on Her Work
- André Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism
- Motherwell (ed.), Documents of Modern Art
- Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation
- Hugh Kenner, A Homemade World
- Flaubert, Letters
- Mamet, Sexual Perversity in Chicago
- Joy Williams, The Changeling
- Joe David Bellamy (ed.), The New Fiction
- Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato
- Amos Tutola, The Palm-Wine Drunkard
- Ann Tyler, Searching for Caleb
- Kenneth Koch, Thank You
- Frank O’Hara, Collected Poems
- John Ashbery, Rivers and Mountains
- Wesley Brown, Tragic Magic
- Roland Barthes, Mythologies
- Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text
- Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel
- Ann Beattie, Falling in Place
- William Gass, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
- Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life
- Gass, The World Within the Word
- Mailer, Advertisements for Myself
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
- Kobo Abe, The Box Man
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
- Peter Handke, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
- Peter Handke, Kaspar and Other Plays
- André Breton, Nadja
- John Barth, Chimera
- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
- Jayne Anne Phillips, Black Tickets
- Peter Taylor, Collected Stories
- Colette, The Pure and the Impure
- Carver, Will You Please be Quiet, Please
- John Cheever, Collected Stories
- Leonard Michaels, I Would Have Saved Them if I Could
- Eudora Welty, Collected Stories
- Max Apple, The Oranging of America
- Flannery O’Connor, Collected Stories
- Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
- Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
- Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
- Wayne C Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction
Related Content:
Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read
W.H. Auden’s 1941 Literature Syllabus Asks Students to Read 32 Great Works, Covering 6000 Pages
Carl Sagan’s Undergrad Reading List: From Plato and Shakespeare, to Huxley and Gide
Josh Jones is a writer, editor, and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him @jdmagness
We’re hoping to rely on our loyal readers rather than erratic ads. To support Open Culture’s mission, please consider making a donation. We accept Paypal, Venmo, Patreon, even Crypto! To donate, click here. We thank you! 
